The Dispute Resolution Center has been selected by the Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH) Disparities Reduction/Minority Health Section to design a curriculum for a 2-day workshop to promote racial and ethnic understanding and teach conflict resolution skills to service providers and administrators in social service agencies, schools and community centers.  The training will provide basic communication skills that will allow parties to address conflicts arising out of diversity issues and can be conformed to a specific ethnic group or service population.

The goal of the training is to improve social justice by enabling communities, government agencies, businesses, non-profits and health care providers to embrace anti-racism techniques that will help deliver health care services to their community; to influence the social determinants of health and decrease health disparities.  Participants will also learn how to recognize cultural conflict and move beyond cultural differences in order to provide effective health care access.

The Training facilitators will be from The DRC.  The workshops are to promote racial and ethnic understanding and teach conflict resolution skills to service providers and administrators in social service agencies, schools and community centers.  The training will provide the communication skills that will allow parties to address conflicts arising out of diversity issues and provide effective delivery of their services.  This workshop will enable service providers to be aware of their own unique perspective, recognize cultural conflict, and move beyond the cultural differences to address the needs of their constituents.

The project partners are Zena Zumeta, The Neutral Zone, The Center for the Education of Women, Washtenaw County Intermediate School District and Ann Arbor Center for Development Behavioral Pediatrics.  The DRC appreciates the opportunity to work with MDCH on such an important initiative in the community.